Finance minister George Osborne said the BBC would pay for the World Service and the BBC unit monitoring foreign media, plus part-fund the Welsh-language channel S4C.
The moves will save the government 340 million pounds (USD 539 million) a year by 2014-2015.
In return, the BBC licence fee, which every British householder must pay to watch television and listen to radio, will be frozen for six years at 145.50 pounds a year.
Until now, the World Service has been funded by the Foreign Office because of its role as a provider of predominantly radio news in English and 31 languages around the world.
Osborne, who announced the freeze as part of a package of sweeping public spending cuts, said: "This deal helps almost every family and is equivalent to a 16 per cent saving in the BBC budget over the period, similar to the savings in other major cultural institutions."